2017 CEA Best Managed Services Solution Winners

CDN Staff

8 months ago

Compugen is the gold award winner in the Best Managed Services Solution category for 2017 for its consumption-based, fixed-cost model for managed services to the highly volatile resource sector. This model allows for flexibility in the way services are delivered without having to endure too many change orders, because it builds in incentives for both parties to become more efficient by trying new delivery and consumption models.

Since innovation is supposed to drive efficiency, changing service delivery and rewarding both parties for better delivery, reduced per-unit cost of delivery, and reduced consumption of service has allowed our gold award winner and its client to reap mutual benefits.

The client needed to flexibly increase and decrease its usage of various managed services, including Access Provisioning, Deskside, and IMACD; it also needed to maintain service levels, and share the benefits of economies of scale with its service provider.

To serve the customer and remain profitable, the gold award winner flexibly added or reassigned staff as required, to meet the variable demand for services. The client had downsized a few months prior, and from there acquired a company, adding 800 employees. They needed a managed service agreement to handle dramatic changes in service requirements while maintaining service levels and not paying for maximum load unless it was needed.

Post-acquisition, during which the gold award winner assisted with onboarding, volumes increased significantly in key areas of service such as service desk, ITAP, and IMAC, while costs per ticket and contact decreased. A win-win all the way around.

The Mississauga, Ont.-based solution provider won the Silver CDN Channel Elite Award for Best Managed Services Solution for its platform, Panacea, allows healthcare providers to dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of their services by digitizing medical records; giving hospital staff mobile access to them; and providing patients with a simple, tablet-based interface that lets them access entertainment, communications, and healthcare information from their beds.

“Panacea offers hospitals limitless integration possibilities, and keeps a patient proactively engaged in their own health care plan,” i3 says in its application, noting that “Not only is Panacea a patient-centric solution, but it provides full integration capability with a hospital’s live environment, becoming the epicenter of dietary ordering, clinical charting, medication barcode scanning, X-ray viewing, and more.”

For example, patients can use the Panacea platform to access test results, view medical information about their condition, and video conference with their healthcare team using their tablets.

Medical staff, meanwhile, can use the tablets to retrieve, update, and modify patient medical records without having to physically visit a nursing station – and everything is stored on the cloud.

“Experience shows tremendous time and cost savings for hospitals and reduced stress on staff and patients,” i3 says in its application.

And whereas other companies deliver only one product or solution, the i3 team is dynamic, offering an array of battle-tested solutions that, in the company’s words, “drive out cost and turn hospital IT into a revenue-generating business.”

“In tandem, business development teams ensure revenue is generated through many different streams such as patient usage and advertising, and managed services teams have customer service and IT staff on the ground assisting patients and clinical staff where needed,” the company says.

i3’s engineering team, based in Toronto, also provides 24-hour support for the company’s application and hardware, and can dispatch technicians on-site within hours should issues arise that cannot be fixed remotely. The company also has disaster recovery scenarios in place should there be a critical hardware failure, ensuring that Panacea errors do not compromise hospital revenues, clinical workflow, or patient satisfaction.

Panacea’s present list of clients include the Ottawa Hospital, Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre, and Toronto’s Humber River Hospital. According to i3, the experience of both patients and staff with the platform has been “outstanding.”

BRONZE: Infinite IT Solutions

Infinite IT Solutions won this year’s bronze award in the Best Managed Services Solution category had a client that needed help improving operational efficiencies and upgrading the back office to include technology and remove paper-based workflows. The client, who also needed someone to support and proactively manage their new world, got everything they wanted and more in Infinite IT iPC (Infinite Proactive Care), which allows them to get their day-to-day tasks completed without having to worry about their IT infrastructure.